Grogged Up Gaming: The Walking Dead – Michonne

I’m a huge fan of Telltale games, I’ve played The Wolf Among Us at least 4 times and the first 2 Walking Dead seasons affected me more emotionally than 6 seasons of the TV show, but I was a little skeptical of this installment. The previous Walking Dead games introduced a whole new group of characters and locations, but I felt like this one was a bit of a grab to cash in on the success of the TV show. I am glad that they chose Michonne as the character to do the spin off on, because she’s easily one of the most interesting characters in the series. That being said, you don’t really need to have any prior knowledge of either the comics or the TV show to fully immerse yourself in TWD:Michonne.

You take control of the titular Michonne and spend the bulk of the season trying to escape the leader of the hostile community of Monroe, while being plagued by visions and flashbacks of Michonnes life before the zombies that litter throughout which for me was the most interesting part of the game. I was shocked a few times by some of the scenes, and the writing does a great job of making you really feel for the characters. There’s no shortage of zombies of course and I’m pretty sure there was more in this game than there was in all of Season 2 of the TV Show (that farm was the worst)

Choices you make can help or hinder other survivors you meet along the way, and influence the story as you play. I always try to play Telltale games as a jerk, but I always fail miserably because I always want everyone to like me, but there’s a few choices in this where I couldn’t wait to pull the trigger.

Instead of the usual 5 episode installments of previous Telltale Games, this game contains 3 episodes with about a 1 to 2 hour runtime with each episode, depending of course how many people and objects you interact with along the way. The game utilizes the same conversation branches and basic puzzles we all know and love from Telltale productions, but it does include a lot more QuickTime event action scenes. As it is a Telltale game, it suffers from the same issues that plagues a lot of their productions like freezing, jittery textures and sometimes music or sound effects cues will happen before the gameplay loads in. They’re all pretty minor bugs and don’t really hinder the gameplay much. The soundtrack choices are fantastic and fit the game really well, and the voice acting is great. It’s available on PS and Xbox consoles, as well as iOS and Android devices. The price point for the full season is 14.99, which seems a bit steep considering the usual price point of 19.99 for most Telltale releases that consist of 5 episodes. If you’re a huge Walking Dead fan I would recommend this game, but if you’re wanting to get your first taste of this style of gaming, I would give this a miss and start with The Walking Dead Season 1.